Estuary Swim and Barbecue

This has been a smashing day. We’re back in Ullapool and the weather is very balmy with beautiful blue skies and a strangely warm wind. I washed the kitchen floor in the morning and did a bit of dusting, hung out a washing, then booked The Moonwalkers show (about the moon landings, not Michael Jackson’s dance!) at the Lightroom at King’s Cross for our London trip later this month. James cut the grass and the repair company arrived to replace the garage door, which was buckled by one of the storms in January. It looks brand new now, not surprisingly. Then we had a delightful stroll into the village and had lunch sitting outside Tea by the Sea. James pointed out to me that the hills around the loch are greening up from their verdant lower slopes towards their still pale brown tops. You can see it very clearly. Very few of the mountains still have patches of snow on them. By the time we got back to the cottage l was rather overheated, so I put on my swimming costume and five minutes later I was swimming in the estuary. Oh boy, the water felt cold compared to the warm air! But once I was in, it felt absolutely wonderful and I swam about for twenty-five minutes while James sat in his deckchair on the shore and read his book on his Kindle. This was my first open water swim of 2024! Back at the cottage James constructed the barbecue and we had our first outdoors cooking of the year. Beef burgers for James (bought from the butcher who visits the village hall on a Thursday) and halloumi burgers for me, with baked potatoes and coleslaw, yummy! Both cats joined us and Tom actually sat between us in the bench for a while! We continued to sit outdoors after dinner until the evening started to cool, and then went indoors for a cup of tea. 

Agricultural Rock

Spring continues to tease us with the outdoors temperature rising and then being replaced with chill breeze before warming up again. But I can tell that it’s going in the right direction. Book club on Wednesday at Susan’s had a few undercurrents, regarding school stuff. Teachers have a difficult job and I think it’s even harder for them now. I had a walk with Alison in Pollok Park on Thursday followed by coffee at the Burrell, it was lovely to see her but what can I do to make her feel better? Nothing at all except be there for her. On Saturday evening James and I went to Jethro Tull; James’ choice since he liked them in their heyday, although they were never one of his top choices. The Royal Concert Hall was sold out, and the aging fans (I include ourselves in that!) enjoyed the quirky folk-rock music very much. No one enjoyed themselves more than founder and lead singer Ian Anderson, who pranced about with his flute, tootling away and often standing on one leg, tapping the rhythm on it with his other leg! The songs were about countryside life, politics, religion, homeless people to name but a few. It was a great concert, much better than I had expected! 

Happy 30th Birthday Cat

Yesterday was Cat’s 30th birthday; I can hardly believe that the lovely teenager we first met has become an accomplished, beautiful thirty year old woman. She spent the weekend with her Mum and Dad in Vienna and we will celebrate with her and Ally when we visit London in May. 

James and I had a pleasant chat with Jamie this morning (his evening) about our visit to New Zealand in October. Then I had a dentist appointment. It was a fine, sunny morning. As I left the house I could see Tom standing on the doorstep of our new neighbours’ house across the road, peering into their hallway through the open front door (they are getting work done in the house so there are workmen going in and out.) As I watched, Tom stepped delicately over the threshold and disappeared into the house. How nosy and cheeky he is! I know that he once sneaked into Suzy’s house and greeted her and the children, but then left in a hurry when he met Brian in the hall; Tom recognises a fellow Alpha Male when he sees one! 

Next, I saw Duke of Edinburgh group walking along Brownside Road. They were unmistakable with their huge backpacks and maps, obviously practising carrying the heavy backpacks and doing a bit of urban navigation. It made me feel quite nostalgic to see them, but so glad that I’m not responsible for pupils’ safety any more.

My dentist appointment was to get my new crown fitted. Unfortunately it didn’t fit despite the dentist chipping away at it for ages and forcing it into the gap between my other teeth about fifteen times. So he had to take another impression of my teeth in order to get a new crown made, and back in went the old temporary filling for now.

When I got home Tom greeted me at our front door and I noticed that the door across the street was now closed; I wonder if he was spotted prowling about inside the house and had to flee? 

I do enjoy cooking at leisure i.e. not in a rush, so I enjoyed pottering about making lasagnes (both meat and vegetable) in the afternoon for Gordon and Morag’s dinner. And I made extra ragout as well to freeze. We used the first of this year’s rhubarb to make a crumble, which turned out very well. We had a very pleasant evening and good chat with our guests. Tom was so friendly to them that he tried to climb onto the table and had to be ejected from the room temporarily! 

The Mavericks

We have had a pleasant and even quite social time since our return from our trip to Islay and Jura. Forrest and Marjory came round on Saturday evening and we had a Chinese meal from Peking Palace, which was tasty. I had tofu with satay sauce, which I haven’t tried before, and it was really good. We all had a good chat and catch up, while Tom and Flora sat on the back of the sofa and listened intently to our conversation. 

On Sunday we met up with Heather and Ewan at Amarone because we had missed our planned curry with them due to our postponed flight. We met in town because they were going to The Mavericks concert at the GRCH later, and James suggested that he and I could go to the cinema. He had looked at going to the Mavericks too but it was completely sold out. I was not to be thwarted however and kept my eye on the Gumtree website. Mid afternoon the offer of two Mavericks tickets appeared, at a nicely discounted rate since the concert was only a few hours later. After a quick flurry of messages I arranged to collect the tickets from Renfrew on our way into town. We had a lovely meal with Heather and Ewan and a great chat, and the concert was fantastic. Our tickets were up high right at the back, facing the stage, in a seating area that I hadn’t even noticed before! They were deemed “restricted view” because a handrail crossed in front of one of them, but James could see over it easily and we thought that they were great seats. The band were tuneful and joyful and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I don’t know much of their music apart from “Dance the Night Away” and I didn’t even realise, until Ewan mentioned it, that it is Country Music. I realise now that it is indeed Country, with a bit of Cuban and Tex-Mex. It was a great evening. 

Unexpected Extra Day on Islay

We woke up to brilliant sunshine, which I felt was an appropriate compensation for being delayed on Islay for an extra day! After a very nice breakfast using the ingredients provided in the luxury kitchen of the apartment, we packed up and headed to Machir Beach on the west coast of the island. We went on a circular walk recommended by the Walk Highlands website. This started at the ruined church with its intricately carved Celtic cross in its graveyard, and continued through a field with lots of sheep and lambs, whom we were careful not to disturb, then up the hill. Eventually we arrived at the beach. Oh boy was it beautiful, a long sandy beach and blue, blue sea, with waves lapping gently on the shore. We had a picnic sitting on the sand dunes with a flask of coffee. It really was idyllic. Then we went to the nearby Kilchoman Distillery, a modern and (to us) lesser known Islay distillery. What a find! It is the most nicely set up (for visitors) distillery that we have seen so far. It is really spacious and smartly decorated with a big circular fire and comfy armchairs, and tables made out of the tops of whisky barrels. It even has a wee restaurant with a lovely display of baking. We didn’t take a tour but James was given two wee complimentary drama of whisky which he drank before his tea and cake, and we had a good look round. And then it was time to make our way to the airport for our flight, which was initially delayed by 50 minutes, but the pilot made up some time so we arrived back to Glasgow less than half an hour late. Another bonus of our unplanned extra day on Islay was that the lovely weather today enabled us to see lots of islands and coast during our flight - yesterday would have been too cloudy. 

Cancelled flight

As forecast, the sunny weather was a mere memory when we woke this morning and it was raining for most of the day. We thought nothing of this, feeling that we had been lucky with our two days of sunshine, and didn’t suspect that it would have an impact on us later. We checked out of the hotel and James went for a Distillery tour while I went to the Antlers Café and read my book. James joined me for a coffee there after his tour, and then we caught the ferry back to Islay - more terrifying reversing onto the wee ferry for me! We went to the Islay Life Museum in Port Charlotte, which turned out to be a great place to spend a bit of time on a rainy day. It had all sorts of objects from the old days on Islay; butter churns, a ship’s whistle, old Christening gowns (just like ours!), a cradle shaped like a boat, old agricultural tools and much more. It also had information on how World Wars 1 and 2 had affected the island; as well as young men dying on the battlefields of Europe there had been a bad air crash and two military shipwrecks in the 2nd World War which had unfortunately resulted in many deaths, quite a few American. The islanders had rallied round to rescue the survivors and bury the dead, for which they were praised by the American President. There were also old photographs of Islay life; dances and theatre productions and school days and milking competitions. We both found it to be fascinating. Back in Bowmore we had a mid afternoon coffee before heading to the airport. It wasn’t until we arrived that we found out that our flight back to Glasgow was cancelled because of low cloud. I had received a text message forty minutes before but hadn’t seen it. James, who knows a lot about aeroplanes, was surprised that it had been cancelled; the cloudy weather didn’t seem all that bad. However there was nothing that we could do, and more unwelcome news was to come; the morning flight tomorrow is fully booked so we won’t get home until the evening. This meant that we have had to cancel a curry at Rasoi with Heather and Ewan that we were both looking forward to (the company as well as the food of course!) To be fair to Loganair they booked us into a very nice hotel in Bowmore and arranged to transport us there by minibus. We decided to extend our car hire in order to give ourselves a bit of independence tomorrow, and set off to the welcoming and newly refurbished Harbour Hotel’s apartments, which are very smart and clean. So here we are, unexpectedly still in Islay. 

A walk at Tarbert on Jura

Today was supposed to be cloudy and indeed it started that way, but the clouds dispersed to reveal another sunny day - we have been so lucky! After another excellent breakfast at the Jura Hotel, we drove to Tarbert, the narrowest point on Jura, where sailors used to carry their boats across when sailing from Colonsay to the mainland at Kintyre. It avoided the dangerous Corryvreckan whirlpool and was a shortcut. It was a lovely walk and very peaceful, there wasn’t another soul around. On the way back to Craighouse (Jura’s main and in fact I think its only village, where there is a shop, a café, the Jura Hotel and the Jura Whisky Distillery) we stopped for a walk on Corran Sands. The colours were beautiful, the pale sand made the water turquoise beside the shore, changing into darker hues as it got deeper. It was an absolutely beautiful day. We went to the Antlers Café where it was sheltered and warm enough to sit outside in the sunshine to drink our cups of tea, and then strolled around Craighouse, down to the pier and back. During dinner we were eavesdropping (as is our wont) on the next table of young people and realised that they were executives from Whyte and Mackay, who own the Jura Distillery. They were chatting quite loudly but when their main courses were served they all became absolutely silent as they got tore into their food - a tribute to the fine cooking of the Jura Hotel!